ICA. Structure and self-discipline are very good for athletes in general. Think like the serious musicians who continue to warm-up on scales and arpeggios throughout their careers.

Most of the good athletes I have known do something along these lines. They create a regular sequence of all the major skills they have previously mastered, and use it as a preliminary warm-up every day they practice. Such a sequence might eventually build up to 15 - 30 minutes. Not only does it re-practice previously learned skills, which is required to keep them good, but it gets your heart and breath rates up, lubricates your joints, and makes you more alert and able to concentrate on new skills afterwards. As your joints become more flexible due to warm-up, deepen your knee bends and edges. After the warm-up sequence, THEN you work on the new skills for this week. (When they are mastered, after a few weeks or months, you append the new skills onto the regular practice routine, without dropping the old ones.) And at the end of your practice, when you are tired, do a regular sequence of stretches - though if your rink is too cold, and you never completely warm up, you may need to stretch off-ice.

Maybe you could ask your coach to help you create a warm-up practice sequence.

I took lessons from a Russian coach, and from his students, who were big on emphasizing certain extended practice sequences of basic edges, progressives, crossovers, and turns in a disciplined fashion, every day. I had a really great whitewater kayak instructor who much did the same thing, with basic stroke and maneuvering sequences, building up in difficulty, but never dropping the basic skills. (You can maybe drop the march and glide type of thing - because you will never use them again. But even basic stroking needs to stay good) I think these things helped their students a lot. For anything approaching mastery (which most of us never achieve, and I certainly won't - but to do as well as we can), it is just as important to practice old skills as new ones. In contrast, when you see someone who manages to get each skill working, then stops working on it, things tend to fall apart after a while.

If that makes any sense to you.

BTW, one odd thing is that when people see me practice those regular, disciplined sequences, they often think I must be a professional coach, and ask about lessons, though I am a long way from being a good figure skater. Maybe because if you practice something a lot, day in and day out, you do get reasonably good at those skills. Maybe because discipline and repetition are so obviously a hallmark of serious athletes.

My personal suggestion would also be that if you do get hungry mid-session, you might be better off eating about 30 minutes before the session, because chewing on and digesting things during the sessions takes away from the energy and attention needed to do other things. But do stay hydrated (drink) throughout the session. Such things vary from person to person, so don't necessarily take my feelings on these matters as optimal for you.

Talking casually to your friends might be better done during end-of-session stretches, or afterwards altogether, because it too steals attention from skills.

I read that they used movie magic for the triple axels since there are so few women skaters who can land it. Say what you want about Tonya, but she was a great jumper!

I've seen some skating movies where they obviously used movie magic on the jumps - you could tell because the trajectories didn't make any sense. While they were in mid-air, they stopped falling for a second or so. I wonder if the makers of this movie will do any better.

It is now perfectly normal to use stunt doubles for actors and actresses in film, to do the most athletic things. High end athletes have to spend most of their lives up to that point training to be high end athletes. Good actors and actresses have to do likewise - but they mostly have to train doing different things.

I still think it would make sense to use Tonya and Nancy's own jumps in the movie - perhaps with a little computer magic to make them look like the actresses playing them. You get the best realism by using the real thing. Plus, it is even possible the USFSA and the ISU wouldn't want a currently competitive skater to double Tonya, in a movie that portrays her sympathetically.

But there are only so many remakes and rehashes I am willing to pay to watch. I think most of us have seen it all before.

The mall rink is open all day, but it's tiny. It seems to be the equivalent of taking the kiddie train around the mall vs. taking Amtrak. I assume they don't allow figure skates because they don't want the toe picks to damage the surface. I wouldn't bother to inquire about any of this since the mall is 2 hours away and I only go there a couple times a year when we're in town to see family. I just found it interesting and a little silly. I don't expect it to last very long in this high end mall.

The adult skating pages on Facebook are generally very civilized and people offer great feedback and suggestions.However, most of the skaters who are landing double jumps are not adult skaters, so they are generally discussing their jumps with their coaches and colleagues at the rink, not on online forums like this.

I think the ratio of women to men has a lot to do with that, as well, Query.

The Adult men I know tend to be, on average, more athletic than the women. When you jump considerably higher, the jumps are easier and safer to train. Going for the jumps and feeling safe doing so has a huge psychological impact.

They are also more competitive - both in general and amongst themselves - than the women. They will go for harder elements because they can and they want to - even if these are elements that they will never compete (i.e. due to level restrictions). If other adult skaters at the rink do harder elements, it's more likely to motivate them to push for them, as well, regardless of the practicality of doing so.

The women are generally quite different in their approach - they train more pragmatically... If they don't need the doubles, then they generally won't risk injury, etc. going for them. Job, Family/Kids, Husband, and other obligations, etc. They have nothing to gain from training the elements (if they can't use it in competition programs, for example), so it's a terrible risk vs. reward proposition for them. They will often pass on that. They are generally more risk averse.

Because there tend to be considerably more women than men on skating fan sites and in skating discussion groups, this has an effect on the discussions that are generated at those resources. Most of the topic-starters aren't in the demographics of Adult Skaters doing Doubles, so most won't create threads or discussions about them. You will also get less responses when you post about those things, because they will often not participate out of consideration for the topic.

Of course, there are other factors, as mentioned... And you mentioned some of them.

I think the best way to get the ball rolling is to just, start more discussions about it if you are at that level/training those elements. It may motivate others to do the same, as well!

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I'm only on Facebook for about 4 months per 24 month period. Outside of that, I delete my account.I join Twitter only during the competition season (to follow competition live tweets), then delete my account.

Aside from that I don't use Social Media, and I really dislike how getting on Facebook causes people to default to Facebook for all communication - often I don't even have the app on my phone, because I get tired of the oversharing notifications.